Maz Jadallah is founder and CEO of AlphaClone LLC, owner of the AlphaClone Hedge Fund Long/Short Index, the index which the ALFA ETF seeks to track before fees and expenses. Maz founded AlphaClone in 2008 with one simple purpose–empower investors by giving them intelligent, instant and transparent access to the investment ideas of hedge fund and institutional investors. Below is a Q&A with Maz about AlphaClone's research approach. Click here for a full bio of Maz Jadallah

Q:

What's AlphaClone's mission?

A:

Empower investors by giving them intelligent access to established hedge fund ideas.

 

Most investors can't conveniently access established hedge funds. AlphaClone's mission is to empower investors by giving them efficient access to the investment ideas of established institutional investors and hedge funds. Our research and portfolio construction approach, called “cloning”, allows any investor to gain exposure to the alpha potential reflected in hedge fund and institutional manager public disclosures. As the AlphaClone name indicates, we seek to clone alpha through our proprietary “cloning” process and make it available to all types of investors.

Q:

What's the evidence that cloning is effective?

A:

A combination of real-world experience and applied research.

 

AlphaClone's real-world experience in managing disclosure-based investment strategies for our investment account clients, as well as independent academic research, validates cloning as an investment discipline. A manager's quarterly disclosures can be valuable due to several factors including a manager's holding periods and the manager's performance correlation to their disclosed long positions. However, like any investment approach, cloning requires an intelligent, thoughtful, disciplined methodology. To learn more about cloning and to access academic white papers on cloning visit AlphaClone's website (http://alphaclone.com).

Q:

What sets AlphaClone apart when it comes to cloning?

A:

Our research capabilities combined with our depth of experience and focus.

 

AlphaClone's experience in developing and implementing real-world investment strategies based on cloning, coupled with our proprietary technology, allows us to continuously optimize our methodology. Our experience points to the importance of three key factors when cloning hedge funds: manager selection, risk management and discipline. All three of these principles are incorporated into the AlphaClone Hedge Fund Long/Short Index.

Manager Selection - it matters a great deal whom you follow. Not all managers should be followed based on their disclosures, therefore having an objective and consistent methodology for manager selection is key.

Risk Management – the index seek's to mitigate the risks associated with individual managers such as performance risk and disclosure risk. In addition we have found that addressing overall systemic market risk is critical.

Discipline over time – we have found that removing the emotion from investing and having a longer term time horizon are key factors to investment success. These two values are integral to our research.

Q:

Why ALFA?

A:

We're responding to our clients who want easy and convenient access to our research strategies.

 

We founded the company in 2008 as a research firm and then in 2010 we began offering core investment strategies inside separate accounts. By licensing our index to Exchange Traded Concepts LLC, we now are expanding access to our research by giving investors the convenience and transparency that ETFs can deliver. Key attributes of the index include:

Clone Score
The index uses a proprietary Clone Score methodology which ranks hedge funds and institutional investors based on the efficacy of replicating their publicly disclosed positions and selects equities from those managers with the highest ranking. Clone Scores are recalculated bi-annually and incorporate factors such as the persistence in excess returns over time when following different combinations of a manager's disclosed positions. The approach provides an objective and consistent approach to manager and constituent selection.

Multi-manager Construction
To mitigate the performance and disclosure risks associated with following a single manager's disclosures, the index selects its constituents from the disclosures of a broad representation of managers.

Dynamic Hedging
The index utilizes AlphaClone's dynamic hedge mechanism which can vary the index between being long only and 50% long/50% short the S&P 500 Index depending on certain NAV price targets based on the index. The mechanism seeks for the index to be long only during protracted market run ups and well hedged during multi-month bear markets.

Rules-Based
The index adjusts its constituents and weights quarterly at pre-defined intervals. Constituents are equal weighted but with an overlap bias that would, for example, give a constituent held by twice the number of managers twice the weight. AlphaClone's rules-based construction and rebalance approach provides a disciplined investment approach that is repeatable over time.

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